Friday, July 10, 2009

What's the best way to use treasure cards?

I have a question here that I hope I can do justice.

username=Victoria Silver Question=Maybe you can help me - what is the best way to use treasure cards? Right now I barely use them, because they seem just a random assortment of cards, and my main deck seems pretty solid, I've got a lot of 0 cost things I can use if I have a bad draw. What should I be doing with treasure cards to make them more useful?

I know, right?! I've got like a ton of these that I don't use. This has been talked about by a lot of people, but I'm going to give you friendly's version.

Consideration #1: You can beat the game without ever using one treasure card.

Consideration #2: There's usually setup time to using treasure cards "the best" way.

Consideration #3: Treasure cards in PvP is essential.

OK, with those three things in mind, let's talk.

Most treasure cards are junk. The best treasure cards are the cards to make new cards yourself; high level cards from your class; or situational shields, debuffs, or effects. Let's talk about each

CARDS TO MAKE NEW CARDS YOURSELFHere's an example of the types of cards you can use to make your own cards with.

So the deal with those is you load a deck with your best card and you put a whole slew of these in the sideboard. Then go to Unicorn Way and find a spot where a bunch of noobies won't join in your fight. When the battle comes up, you discard a wand spell, and draw one of these treasure cards and apply it to your regular card. You keep doing this until you can't anymore . . . wand the monster that's been picking away at you to end the fight, and then start over.

Keep doing this until you build a huge stockpile of these self-made cards. Hopefully you have a friend to chat with or something else to distract you while you do this because it's time consuming and a little boring. But, having these cards will cut down your time when you're in an actual battle and will be using them.

So, to use these cards you set up your regular deck with only blades, traps, debuffs, and a couple emergency damage cards. You fill your sideboard with as many of your self-made cards as you can. AND YOU KEEP REFILLING YOUR SIDEBOARD AFTER EVERY FEW FIGHTS!

What does this do for you? I think you know the answer. Having these in your sideboard takes some of the randomness out of the game. When you have enough pips, you just discard an unneeded card, draw your monster card, and play it. No longer will you have to keep discarding and waiting for the turns to pass before your monster card *finally* shows up. It's just right there for you and it's a stronger or more accurate card than your regular card. perfect . . . except for that dreaded setup time I mentioned earlier.

HIGH LEVEL CARDS FROM YOUR CLASSNotice I said "from your class" in the title of this section. You really don't want to be wasting your pips on a spell that isn't from your class. Sure it may look cool and it may "seem" to do more damage than a spell from your own class, but it's all about the power pips. The only time it might make sense to use a spell outside of your class is if you cast one of these three spells.

Those spells give you a short line of single pips. NOW, in that case, it makes sense to use a more powerful spell outside of your class; otherwise, you're just wasting power pips. I digress.

Say you're a level 40 something necromancer who does not yet have access to the ultimate AOE power for your class: scarecrow. It would be a very good idea to load your sidebar full of scarecrow cards.

I know that Myth wizards love the Ninja Pig treasure card. It's myth based, it's awesome, and they don't have a "single hit" 5-pip card outside of it. Do your myth wizard friends a favor if you find one of these Ninja Pig cards: open up a trade window and give them all your Ninja Pig cards. They'll love you for it.

SITUATIONAL SHIELDS, DEBUFFS, AND EFFECTSCheck out these treasure cards:

Those are just a few I had in my bags on Thomas this morning. In regular PvE play, I'm not going to be using these a lot, but in PvP, timing one of these is everything. Blocking damage is huge in PvP . . . and timing when you're going to block damage is everything. If I play a lightning shield card too early, most likely my opponent will break it with a weak lighting spell or wand cast. But if I play a lightning shield the moment before my opponent plays a Triton card against me . . . I win! In that case, once again, I'm using my sideboard treasure cards to take some of the randomness out of the game and adding predictability.

So, to sum up this big long post . . . THE BEST WAY TO USE TREASURE CARDS IS TO HELP REMOVE RANDOMNESS AND ADD PREDICTABILITY. And that's about it. Drawing from your sideboard will help you time your attacks and defenses.

9 comments:

I disagree with some of the things you said I find that the treshur cards I win are more helpful than the ones that I made. I am thou considering trashing all my myth spells in for death I do want a second school but there are a few myth spells I like (Myth or death I just can't deside) I used to PVP alot and I used a treshur card only once in the 20 battles I've been in. P.S. I can't beat the game with out treshur cards I don't have reshufl so I need them incase of a bad set.

@Silverheart: YMMV, but I think as you get higher in levels (you're currently in Krokotopia, right?), you'll really start to see the power of the power pip. At lower levels, you're probably best served with healing cards in your sideboard.

I hardly ever needed the reshuffle treasure card, but it sounds like you've built a very specific way of playing your character. If it works for you, keep doing what you're doing.

IMHO, the best way to play treasure cards is to add predicibility and remove randomness. I think you'll find others agreeing with me. (others reading, please feel free to chime in. Maybe I am completely off base here, but I don't see how.)

Thanks very much for your explanation! I guess I may be a long way from doing all that - for one thing, isn't it very expensive to buy all those specific treasure cards to set up as you describe? Right now I don't have enough money to get a lot of the things I want as it is.

@starsongky: yeah, they are still in the libraries. So making your own this way is still in the game.

@Victoria: hope it helped! Yup. 50 gold a card. 100 cards will be 5000 gold. At the lower levels, it really doesn't make sense to play this way, but in the higher levels it's not uncommon at all to get vendor drops that are 100-500 gold in value per fight. So, you can still come out ahead. AND, if you get lucky, your cards will land in such a way that your "emergency" card that you loaded in your deck build can be used instead of a treasure card and you save yourself some money. A lot of that then becomes a question of "deck building" rather than the best way to use treasure cards.

well, what i do is i sell all my (not the best cards) to bazzar. like ghost touch. also, i only use treasure cards in boss battles. it does some more damage then its regular spell ( if its a damage spell anyways) and sadly as we all know, once you use it you can never use it again.